Bless This Mess

–I messed up my shot cycle slightly on Tuesday, giving myself only one shot instead of two, but even so I feel the difference. I’m feeling stronger, more alert, I have energy, and much, much less pain. It’s officially been a year since I started giving myself the injections, and my biggest regret is not following up with my lackluster response to Cimzia sooner. I’m optimistic about Humira and I hope it’s effective for me for a long time.

–While watching Voyager I noticed an officer named Carlson, and in TNG there is one named Castillo. I am so stoked that members of my family eventually find their way to Starfleet!

–Happy Solstice! The holiday I both love and hate! I used to only love it, but that was before climate change blessed us with multiple weeks of 110F+ weather. Instead of celebrating, this time of year feels like something that just needs to be endured. Last year my friends Dave and Stef held a Solstice party to help us make the best of it. Valerie made a special Stonehenge cake and it was amazing. Isobel described this weather perfectly when she said, “I feel like a ham in the oven!”

–I wrote a tweet, like a do dozens of times a day, without thinking much of it, and somehow it ended up being retweeted fifteen thousand times. For awhile my twitter handle, @exlibris, was a trending topic in Canada, Australia, Seattle and New York. I’m still getting more @-replies than I can handle, so if you are mentioning me and I’m not replying, it’s because I’m caught up in a sea of mentions. It is a really strange experience.

–Elias has been putting Isobel’s fairies in his bug cage. Quite amusing.

–If you want to see a confused old woman attempting to navigate in the future, follow me on Snapchat. I’m housemistress.

–Last week the kids had a bunch of fun going to a cabin with my cousin and her children, our buddies Sam and Victoria, and then to the zoo with cousin Kai and grandma and grandpa. Sadly, I had several bad days in a row, even after four injections, and couldn’t go with them. That was really hard for me, because day trips with family are my jam, but hopefully once I get this new treatment established, I’ll be shouting ROAD TRIP! with the rest of them.

–Isobel is trying to be exactly like me in every way she can. She says she’s “Little Mama”, and I’ve been attempting to give her some blonde highlights in the front. Her hair has gotten long, and she doesn’t want to stop until it’s just like mine.

–The biggest and best news lately is that Anthony accepted a great job offer with a company out of Modesto. He will be doing IT and networking and computer-y things, just as he did before. We are so excited, and he is ready to work his butt off and show his value to the company. I am relieved we will not face another long stretch of unemployment. The last time he was laid off we almost immediately got pregnant. Elias is our very special memento from that time.

–Something destroyed my mint plan overnight, and I was left with nothing but sad sticks planted in the ground. A few days later I noticed my basil was looking awful, and further inspection revealed five fat cabbage looper moth caterpillars. I set them aside for what I’m calling “educational bug torture.” I gave my kids a lesson in nature and let them play with the pests in the process. This is what they get for messing with my garden.

–One evening Elias decided to pile all his favorite toys (swords of various types, a ball) in one location, for easy access. My friend Stef said it looks like he’s building an arsenal.

Winter is here, and in the backwards Persephone myth in which we live, the earth has sprung back to life. This is the time of year when things grow green, naturally, and unbidden, wherever there’s a bare patch of earth and sometimes where there isn’t. The storms we had in midwinter have soaked the ground and prepared it for the sunshine and mild temps to explode each dormant seed to life. Our garden became a floodplain, and then a jungle. When the snow thaws and spring emerges for the rest of the country, our land will begin to dry and anything not supported by the careful watering of human hands will die. Only the hardy yellow and brown weed-grasses will survive.

There is lots to do outside this time of year, and though I prefer to be outside only when the rain stops, the kids don’t agree. But we’ve had a month of really spectacular spring whether (a break in the storms by all accounts) and have fully enjoyed it by playing outside as much as possible. By the time June hits, it will become extremely unpleasant outside, and July and August will be unbearable. But now it is a paradise, and Isobel is excitedly discovering her favorite winter-spring plants all over again. Miner’s lettuce, her personal favorite, has been particularly abundant, probably due to all the rain. We are seeing nettles and little heart-festooned shoots of Shepard’s purse everywhere.

On wet, foggy days the yard with its lush green grasses and plants looks like an underwater garden, a seabed fit for a mermaid to hang her jewels.

Right after Christmas we saw an explosion of sprouted seeds that were planted last year. If you remember, I started my garden in May, which was much too late. It was too hot and too dry and only seeds that were planted much earlier in the year managed to germinate. Even though I planted many hardy, warm-weather plants, such as sunflowers, marigolds, and native California poppies, they lay inactive in their sandy beds. Promptly after Christmas they sprouted in earnest, and I had lovely lace-leafed poppy plants everywhere, and sunny marigold faces bloomed at us from our patio. We even had a profusion of sunflower sprouts all around our archery targets, just as we’d wanted last year. Unfortunately, my Dad, who volunteered to tame our suburban jungle, was not very discerning, and pulled those plants up. Our yard looks very tidy now, and we certainly appreciate all his hard work. It’s good therapy for him, too, and though I don’t want to go into it in detail, his health is in serious decline, and I’m grateful for him to spend this time with us. Besides, we weren’t even close to being done with planting poppies yet.

Because I bought a fourth of a pound of California poppy seeds in bulk online.

We tried putting in an actual lawn in our yard twice, mostly for the kids’ sake, but unbeknownst to us we had sprinkler issues, so both times due to the faulty sprinklers and intense dry heat of summer, the lawn failed. This was before the drought, and now it seems immoral to keep trying. In summer our backyard is mostly dry scrub land. So I decided, since growing a garden of poppies is my thing, why not just coat our whole lawn area with poppy seeds? I found a mix at Eden that was different colors of California poppy, my favorite and ordered in bulk. (A fourth of a pound might not seem like a lot, but when each seed is tiny and weightless, it is a substantial amount.) They sent me a packet of zinnias with my order, and my Mom gave me a package of mixed wildflower seeds, so one weekend Isobel and I went to town and planted them all, including some poppy seeds from my garden that I saved from last year and the remaining pumpkin and butter nut squash seeds we’d squirreled away from previous years. I also found some carrot and sunflower seeds that I meant to get planted but instead languished in a desk drawer. I’m not sure what will come up, but it will be interesting. I am very much looking forward to an explosion of poppies.

We had some days of frost and fog but usually the sun came out eventually on those days, leaving drops of dew or melted frost shimmering on leaves and petals.

The sun has been gentle and lights up the green everywhere as if the plants are gilded with gold.

We are probably having the kids’ birthday party at our house, so it’s really nice to have my Dad’s help with the yard.

Isobel insists on wearing her “sun hat” when she is outside, which is what she is now calling her safari hat. She does this because I have to wear one in the summer, as I don’t own any prescription sunglasses, and it is ungodly bright outside.

Our roses and sidewalk container gardens are happy as ever. My parents really help with the heavy lifting for the roses, and I tend to all things potted.

Elias has really relished garden time lately; digging in the dirt, playing in the plants, attempting to use a watering can, covering as much of his body with dirt as possible.

We’ve had such abysmal luck with tomatoes I think I’m just going to grow different varieties of cherry tomatoes and leave it with that. Cherry tomatoes seem to like us.